


all our times have come

by eat_crow



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Grim Reapers, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 17:07:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30025026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eat_crow/pseuds/eat_crow
Summary: Arthur is Life. Merlin is Death.You don't think you could spare this one? Just this once?
Relationships: Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 47
Collections: Merlin Bingo





	all our times have come

**Author's Note:**

> major character death? i thought you said major character: death !
> 
> for the merlin bingo square **c5: major character death**

"You don't think you could spare this one?" Arthur asks, looking down at the hospital bed, curling his fingers into his own robes of white and red and gold. "Just this once?"

Merlin shifts his grip on his staff. The palid, sickly little girl carries on in her restless sleep.

"You know that I would," is his only mournful answer. He thinks Arthur is lucky, in that respect. He gives. He creates. He'll never have to know what it's like to _take_. To be the end.

A deep, chest rumbling bell hits, and the two men look to each other. Arthur holds out his hand. Merlin takes it. Arthur's palm is warm, sweating just so at the palm at the tips of his fingers. Merlin's is icy and stiff. His shoulders sag with the weight of a life. Arthur's, too, at the loss of it. Their hands drop to their sides.

The girl shifts. For the first time in months she presses her hands to her eyes and stretches with a squealing yawn. He supposes that this, the relief, the pain no longer felt, is not so bad. Merlin takes a step towards the bed. 

"Wake up, my love," he says kindly. "It's time to go." The little girl sits up. She rubs her nose. It must feel good to not have that feeding tube down her nostril anymore.

"Where's my mom?" She asks, blinking up at him.

"She'll join you," he says, helping her down from the bed, "when she's ready." Merlin guides her around Arthur, which she doesn't understand because she cannot see him. She isn't his anymore.

"Pretty," she remarks, looking at the pale pink Barbie playhouse door that's taken up shop in the center of the room. 

"Very," Merlin agrees. He bends over and hooks his fingers in the slot of a doorhandle to open the door for her. The girl wrings her hands. She asks a question she has become used to asking, as doctors poked her and prodded her for so much of her young life.

"It's not gonna hurt, is it?"

"No," Merlin says. "You'll not hurt, anymore. You've been so brave."

The girl smiles, a small and tentitive little thing. She'd only been seven. 

The door is gone the moment she disappears through it. The girl's body lays still on the bed, the monitor a flat line, the nurses called already. They'll arrive any moment.

But Arthur and Merlin will not be there to see it. Because at that moment in Kaunas, a woman screams in the backseat of her car, sweat clumping her hair, sobbing to her husband that _no, it's too late, i'm having it here._

Arthur, so golden and boyish, grins at Merlin.

"Race you," he says, and is gone.

And Merlin, so blue and ancient, smiles as he's crammed into the passenger seat of a Volkswagen Passat on his next blink.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr @ [sterlingdylan](https://sterlingdylan.tumblr.com)


End file.
